Step 10: Opening the Beverage

Step 11: Enjoy

You can drink your now carbonated beverage. Enjoy!Use the byproduct for making sodium acetate. Click Here

Have you ever wanted to make your own carbonated beverages such as soda and carbonated water? Well, I have. However, after doing a lot of research I realized that the carbonation machines you can buy cost hundreds of dollars. But then I found this way of doing it. It costs very little and can be made with stuff found around the house. It's great for making homemade sodas, seltzer water, and even re-carbonating flat beverages. I even tried carbonating chocolate milk... it was pretty interesting but not bad. :D

WARNING: BE CAREFUL! If you use too much vinegar and baking soda, it could blow up and make a huge mess in your kitchen, or worse... injure you. It happened to me (not the injury, but the explosion). I can assure you, it is not fun to clean up. This is high pressure stuff you are working with. So, please consider safety glasses and doing this outside on your first couple tries. Please don't hold me responsible for the mess in your kitchen if it does explode.

this was really good video work and excellent instruction detail; however; toilet tissue---I do not think I will ever drink soda's ever again unless you tell me one simply uses the tissue to shake the baking soda into the vinegar..... in that case why can't you just use a measuring spoon and a funnel....?

Looks like this is working for most of you, but we've tried everything we can figure out and none of the CO2 is staying in the drink. As soon as we begin to open the drink container (yes, with the tube pinched tightly), all of it violently bubbles immediately--not spewing out like when you shake a soda bottle, but big bubbles like it's boiling. There's nothing left by the time we can get it to our mouths. We live at 3000ft elevation, so I know that will have some effect, but it seems like SOME of it should stay in solution. We've tried the diffuser trick, we've tried adding more and less baking soda...any help out there?

I tried the same thing! The difference was that I cut a napkin into quarters and used one quarter of a napkin instead of toilet paper. I also lacked the tube and used straws. It was rather hard, but, I did the same thing.

I'm thinking that a diffuser at the end of the tube would help the CO2 into the water a bit more effectively. I accomplished this without any extra cash spent on fancy ceramic diffusers by just plugging the end of the tube and poking several holes along its length (near the end) with a small needle. Smaller bubbles should let the CO2 be absorbed more easily.

...if it's anything like ozone, I haven't tried this project yet, but the diffuser (holes poked into the tube) works very well on my water ozonater (purifier).

Second idea, is to use citric acid instead of vinegar; in powder form. Put small amounts of citric acid and sodium bicarbonate into one bottle with the short tube protrusion, water into the other bottle with the length of tube. Squeeze the bottle of water, forcing the water through the tube into the powdered mix, creating CO2 (see Alka-Seltzer). This way there's no toilet paper and no rush to screw caps on. Just off the top of my head, may be a terrible idea. :)

Third one is this: a small "pressure relief" hole cut into the lid of the bottle with the water. My thinking is that this eliminates risk of explosion (you are creating a pressure vessel after all, see pipe-bomb) as well as allowing more CO2 to be bubbled through the beverage as its flow is no longer restricted by equal pressure on the side with the water. Realize that in two closed vessels, once pressure is equal, there's no more flow between them.

Hope I could help. Third suggestion is a very strong recommendation on my part, I don't want to read an Instructable on how to remove plastic shrapnel. :)

P.S. - I did not read every comment, if any of this has been previously suggested, please disregard. Except for the good parts.

It's crucial to note that this should be done with SODA bottles only, and not other types. Soda bottles are designed to withstand the pressure from the co2 escaping the soda, and have been safely taken up to 150 psi. Regular water bottles could potentially fail, as could other plastic containers that somebody could try.

I think: The reaction of the Baking Soda with the acid leaves you with CO2, H2O and Na (Sodium). So you get the carbonation that you want, but with the extra Sodium, I'm not sure if it'd be good to drink too much of that. Sure, there's Sodium in sports drinks but you're not advised to drink those all the time.

It may be safe, though. I haven't really put much effort into looking up the effects of drinking alkaline metals. :)

Oh, yeah! Today i found it on market place. Some people were selling some tubes and i asked them do you have some transparent and smaller, and they had it! I had i don't want to buy it now but when i will be having money, maybe tommorow. He ignored my question and asked me: "How much long", i said "about 2 meters is enough" and he gave it to me for free!

thx very much for this instructable. i tested it, it works, and it's quite handy. i've assembled the tools in a box and labeled it "Carbonator."

there's only one thing i would change:

PROBLEM toilet paper doesn't work for me. it disintegrates easily in the water and when shaken it can clog the tube.

SOLUTIONS since the goal is to add the baking soda all at once, you may wanna use 1. either stronger paper (wax, parchment, plastic) leaving one end open. however, this still is a single-use method, or

2. place the b/soda in a small, open-ended container* (smaller than the bottle neck) and add it to the vinegar all at once. this multi-use method eliminates the need for paper altogether.

*an "open-ended container" can be a marker top, a short cigar tube, an empty BIC pen (remove ink cartridge, leave top on), a piece of hose with a cork on one end, or any similar object.

I tried this last week and guess what?...I died! That's right, I died!(I typed this beforehand) So you may want to include something like, "DO NOT SUBSTITUTE INGREDIENTS, OR YOU COULD GET REALLY HURT! and stuff. I did everything exactly like you said except, we were out of baking soda so I used the next best thing...aluminum foil. And my mom wasn't too crazy about me wasting her, retirement vinegar" "just to carbonate a bowl of split pea n ham soup that dit'n even have no croutons in it, no how!" She said it probably wouldn't taste right no matter how fizzy it was. Anyway, the closest thing to vinegar we had was Muriatic acid, so I figured I would just use more to compensate for the substitution (you know the old, "molar mass" dealy). Everything else I did exactly the same. Anyway, I think I died doing it this way. (I don't know for sure because I think I was too dead to remember) So I just wanted everyone who was thinking of doing it the way I did, to, "NOT DO IT THE WAY I DID" IT MIGHT NOT WORK very well! If you don't have the right ingredients you should probably wait until you get them. Other than the fact that I died the first time I tried it, it was an awesome ible. Killer chemistry.

Har-har, but flawed logic. Muriatic acid is Hydrochloric Acid/HCl and when mixed with aluminium, creates hydrogen gas and aluminium chloride. However, when you add baking soda to the equation, Acid + Sodium Bicarbonate > Sodium Chloride + Water + Carbon Dioxide You get salt, carbon dioxide and whatever that is left of your aluminium. So when you have everything in a bottle, unless you were doing it over a stove, the hydrogen was nothing but a gas expanding in it. The cap probably flew off and hit you in your face, the bottle most likely exploded, but that's about as bad as what a now salt water and aluminium mixture could do. I don't think anyone would use HCL to replace vinegar, anyway. And who would run out of toilet paper?

I didn't have baking soda, that's Y solving for X could be considered flawed logic as well. But, your comment does bring to the surface an important question that I'm most certain could prove more difficult to solve than Fermat's last theorem or any of Einstein's theories (relatively); Indeed, who would run out of toilet paper?

Maybe s/he used a big bottle, so the pressure was really really high and the popping bottle killed them. Maybe they were smoking and ignited the H2 and got blown up. Or maybe the scalding of the HCl burned off all their skin, and they died of blood loss.

Chlorine might sting your eyes, but so does sea water. Chlorine could make you cough blood, but breathing salty water might make you cough pure salt. Think twice. There is a reason why it is in your drinking water and swimming pools.

when its in swimming pools and water though,it is extremely deluted, and has a different chemical name, pure chlorine is actualley a gas,and how are you going to dissovle that much chlorine into a pool or water without dying? suits maybe,but you see the point, the stuff they use in pools and water are different then gasious chlorine, which is our subject. and 1.Who the hell is going to breath in pure saltwater? 2.Bathroom soap may sting your eyes but cyanide will also sting them, so just because they have a near - same effect dosnt mean there close to the same and 3.Brush up on your chemistry

...that wouldn't work at all... the whole reason this reaction works is because: HC2H3O2 + NaHCO3 --> H2CO3 + NaC2H3O2 but, carbonic acid immediately decomposes to H2O and CO2 due to instability under standard conditions. Which is why this is perfectly safe... I don't know why you thought aluminum would be a good substitute for the bicarbonate ion, but it would only make for a single replacement reaction that wouldnt give you what you wanted.

Your telling me it wasn't what I wanted, it tasted like you know what. Plus, my parakeet that was in the room when I did it started coughing(kind of sounded like/ or wheezing). Anyway, I don't know what I made but, like I said, it was undrinkable to everyone but my brother and he's kind of got a screw loose.

"why in toilet paper?" because carbonation begins the moment the baking soda is added to the vinegar. if the baking soda is added gradually, your vinegar bottle will overflow before you have a chance to add all the baking soda and replace the lid.

since toilet paper disintegrates quickly but not instantly, the entire quantity of baking soda can be added at once. this gives you just enough time to replace the lid.

however, the "toilet paper method" presents other problems. see my comment below for alternative paper types and methods. good luck! Mike

with regards to the amount of carbonation, we should be able figure out the "correct" amount.commercial seltzer bottles use 8 grams of CO2 for a liter of water. so, how much baking soda and vinegar is needed to produce 8 grams of CO2? its been a while since my high school chemistry, so let me know if this makes sense.CO2 weighs 44g/mole. so we need to make 0.182 moles of CO2.and the equation isNaHCO3 + HOOCCH3 = NaOOCCH3 + H2O + CO2which means, i think, we need 0.182 moles of baking soda and 0.182 moles of acetic acid to make 0.182 moles of CO2. by weight, thats:15.3 grams of baking soda and 10.9 grams of acetic acid.I'd say thats about 1 tablespoon of baking soda.lets assume vinegar is 5% acetic acid, so we'd need 218 grams of vinegar, or a little less than one cup.does that all sound correct?is this economical? lets say 32oz of vinegar is $1.50, and a tablespoon of baking soda cant be more than a few cents, so 40 cents per 8grams of CO2. slightly better than the 60 cents to a dollar that the CO2 cartridges cost, not to mention the $60+ you've saved by not buying a seltzer bottle.environmentally, now you're paying to bottle and ship vinegar rather than water, but at least the scale is less. But maybe citric acid is better in this regard? I dont know what the price is.

Unlike most of the girls in my Baby Boomer cohort, I always thought the science geeks in high school were the sexiest. So this is sexy, man! (Or woman, if that's what you are!) If you come up with a per-liter carbonation recipe using either the vinegar and baking soda OR citric acid and baking soda, will you please post it? You might save some people from blowing up their kitchens if you do. I used to make mead. I'll never forget my first batch. It took months to get that stuff off the kitchen ceiling.... You come to understand that fooling with Mother Nature without awareness and respect can have disastrous consequences. Also, I'm curious to know how long the carbonation will remain if one, say, carbonated a 2-liter bottle and kept it in the fridge to drink on for a day or so.

how can i not respond to that with some more chemistry?the above recipe is per one liter, but i don't think the appropriate recipe will help avoid explosion much, since its supposed to build up pressure.According to the gas law pv=nrt, with n=0.182 moles of gas, and t= 300k (room temperature), and constant r = 0.08205784 Latm/Kmol, at p=1 atm (sea level pressure), the gas would take up about 4.5 liters of space. And assuming the gas generation bottle is 1 liter, and mostly empty of liquid, and the other bottle is mostly full, that 4.5 liters of gas is being pressurized into 1 liter of space, which is something like 65 PSI (more if you have a smaller bottle, as the one in this instructable appears to be). although the soda bottles should be able to take something like 200PSI, i expect the tubing connections are far below that, so you're just asking for something to blow up. And when you open the bottles, all that pressure is going to go somewhere. but isnt that part of the fun?

i cant say how long the carbonation will last. depends on how well it got carbonated to start with, how well it stays sealed, and how cold it is. As other people have mentioned, the beverage should carbonate better if its cold to start with (gases dissolve more easily in cold liquid), and should hold the carbonation better if you keep it cold.

One advantage of the commercial seltzer bottles is they stay sealed and pressurized until you're done with the beverage, but i think with this apparatus you'd be able to get the bubbles to last about the same length as a store bought bottle of soda, but i haven't tried to do a comparison.

i dont know if i could find a better comment to respond to on the topic of explosions, but, in any case, you could probably avoid having to clean up your possible mess by carbonating outdoors. i made the carbo-tea in my backyard, but as long as your not around anything that would be damaged if it got wet, you could carbonated pretty much whever you have access to outdoors. just an idea...

heck yes! I'm not all super serious about it when it comes to like, rigorous training schedules and all that. i just like to climb and jump and vault and balance and so on and so forth. i get called spider-man or monkey-boy (or something of the like) twice a day on average at my school. even the African-Americans at my school admit that I've got hops. My great-great grandfather was mulatto so perhaps that canceled out the white-man-can't -jump-syndrome. the school janitors don't exactly appreciate it when they see you on the roof of say...the school office or the boy's locker room though. i once got On-Campus-Suspension for a couple days for climbing the flagpole. i would have gotten away scot-free, but evidently i was "disrespectful to authority" when i got tossed into the head-of-securities office. Anyways, I'm saddened by a seeming lack of traceusses. have you watched jump Britain or jump London? David Bell is one of my hero's, (along with Travis Barker and Edgar Allen Poe)

Hey, I figured out a way to make stuff a lot more carbonated, do you want me to post it or could I make a instructable (it would be my first one) out of it. If I made an instructable I would give you credit for the original design. Thanks, hockeydeewall

Hey, Wow... haven't been on instructables for a while. Well, I'm thinking about doing the instructable that i had mentioned before about improving on your design. But, I'm changing my username to survivingteenageboredom, so it's still me if you see the instructable made by that user. Thanks for this instructable (i've carbonated A LOT of drinks using this method... it's a lot cheaper than buying a CO2 tank :) hockeydeewall (from now on survivingteenageboredom)

Hey, you said you figured out a way to make stuff a lot more carbonated, please let me know. I'm doing this experiment for my science project and I need results like yesterday. I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks, Saenz

Holy sh*t!!! This is an awesome idea!!! I've tried making ice-tea soda before by using yeast, but it was a total failure since it ended up tasting like apple juice and beer (yuck!!!). I was planning on using baking soda instead of yeast next time, but this is an even better idea!!! Thanks man!!!

coooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool i got this stomach bug so all i can drink is seltzer water club soda and anything else that is not regular water. even though the water here is crystal clean it still tastes bad

This is the easiest carbonating system I've seen put together! Everywhere else I search online the systems are complicated and expensive. But I have one quick question; where would I be able to find the tubing necessary for this? Is there a substitute if any?

It would be much more economical to just use dry ice, you should try to incorporate that into your idea. Vinegar and Sodium hydrogen carbonate are both expenisive but solid CO2 is around $5 per kilo, thats alot of CO2 gas!

except you would have to mass produce your drink in order to use a small portion of the dry ice from the blocks that are available to buy. In small quantities, vinegar and baking soda are much more economical.

I once used it to carbonate some flat coke, there was around a liter left and the bottle was a 2 liter. I used one pellet of dry ice which is around 1 or 2 grams i geuss. If you live in Aus every PET bottle has to be rated to 280 PSI by law so if you are careful it wont turn into a pressure explosive (hehehe)

A: I live in Australia, we are currently 4th on the Human Developement List so my country is not poor B: Its just that in Australia its much cheaper to buy dry ice than to mix Sodium hydrogen Bicarbonate and vinegar C: And if I was in a poor country, everything would be expensive therefor dry ice would be too. Vinegar is like $5 a bottle and NaH(CO3)2 is reasonable @ $1/kg It is just CHEAPER to use DRY ICE

lol,thats either because if its sour,you accidentley got vinegar in the water during the process,or because carbonated water tastes disguisting and you have to make pop with it for it to acctually taste good.

Your tube might be too close to the vinegar and baking soda mixture or there is too much vinegar and b.soda in the bottle. The water shouldn't taste like that if just the CO2 is going into it. So, somehow the vinegar/bs mixture is making its way into the water through the tube.

i accidentally had vinegar and baking soda explode on me and some went in my eye so i flushed(not with the toilet ,in the bath room at the time) i looked up to have more mix in my eye frome drips on the ceiling

GAH! you beat me to it! I have wanted a drink carbonator for ages and i finally thought of a baking soda/vinegar one. Mine doesnt quite work yet though... I was using garden hose as its the only thing i had around and i think thats the problem (it doesnt squeeze into gaps well) my question is: Carbonated milk?

Eww.. the carbonation produces carbonic acid, which is a weak acid but probably still strong enough to curdle the milk. Even if you don't end up with foamy cheese, it will probably taste unbelievably disgusting. Interesting fact, however, Fanta used to be made of whey (liquid part of separated milk) and apple pulp, so there might be some mileage in it after all. One last word of caution, I'd pay extra attention to the warnings of bottles spraying the drink all over if you are planning to use milk...

Be careful with that garden hose! Be sure you buy one that's suitable for drinking water. Most garden hoses are NOT and are nasty to drink from. Might even poison you! I've seen hoses, though, made for RVs and boats that say they are suitable for drinking water. I think this is a great instructable. It's gotten me thinking about rigging up something like this to make CO2 for a lettuce-raft hydroponics setup. Plants are supposed to grow better if you give them some CO2. Or at least that's what I've read.

Not safe, I heard. Dry ice, while it is frozen CO2, may have chemicals in it. Heard someone talking about dropping dry ice in punch to make it "smoke", and that bit of knowledge was dropped on them. Need a dry ice connoisseur to confirm, though.

My science teacher back in eighth grade used to carbonate his drinks all the time with dry ice. Dry Ice is pure frozen CO2, which is exactly what usually carbonates your drink. Putting it in it simply makes it bubble a lot, then after two minutes, it's sufficiently carbonated.

i had a similar idea, but i would replace the vinegar and baking soda with dry ice, not alot, actually not very much at all. I would probably use about a gram of solid CO2 since there are 2 containers, one filled with water

haha! nice instructable! i have been meaning to do this for quite some time now, but i just made my first drink today: carbonated un-sweetened raspberry iced tea! weird! but, not bad, i cant wait to try apple-juice or, as the last comment currently posted beneath me said, lemonade! Kudos!

Could maybe try drilling the hole smaller, or stick something slightly larger in the rubber tubing, like a pencil. Apply a little heat, and remove the pencil when it cools. Doing this will make the tube larger at the point you need it to be :) That is , if you're concerned about toxicity :)

i would think glass is ok to use, because the pressure generated shouldn't be too great. be careful if you try it though. use sturdy containers. wear protective gear the first time. glass exploding isn't fun

woot! thats awesome (and the cheapest one iv seen). Ok i got a few questions tho, is the carbonation of this as of seltzer water or not as intence (less bubbly), like if i 'revived' soda, would it be exactly, less, or more bubbly? Anyway, great Instructable, and i will make some when i get this message back :-).

umm.... it really depends on the amount of vinegar and baking soda you use. The more you use, the more fizzy it will be. I usually fill the bottle about 1/3 or 1/4 full of vinegar and about 1 tbsp of baking soda. Try adding more baking soda for more fizz. Be careful though, if you use too much it could blow up.

Its great to see a young kid like you posting amazing instructables. Keep it up and please post some more projects- I also recommend keeping a log of all this stuff to send in to colleges in a few years, they'll be impressed!

You might better call it Acetic Acid. It could be possible you might not know about it, it is available in markets. It is possible you might not know because it is mostly used in Asian countries, on noodles and stuff...

After running a few numbers, I came up with the ratio of 1 part baking soda to 9 parts vinegar. So if you're using 2 liter bottles and using close to the same chemical reaction to water ratio as our good friend egreen is, it would be about half a liter of vinegar with 4 tablespoons of baking soda. I haven't actually tried this yet (I came up with the numbers after running out of vinegar) so if someone could confirm or deny this, that would be super.

I just use 20 oz bottles, the tubing size really doesn't matter, and I have never really measured the amount of vinegar and b. soda. I usually fill the bottle like about 1/3 or 1/4 full of vinegar and about 1 tbsp of b. soda. You kinda have to experiment with it. Sorry about the explosion... that happened to me once. It coincidentally was apple juice too. LOL That happens when there is too much vinegar and baking soda.

I just did this, and two tips:It takes a long time, I got no results after 1 hour.And to release pressure -- poke a SMALL hole in the tubing. It comes out veryyy slowwly... keep repeating if impatient.

Pretty cool...I like the "science fair" approach! Check out my more "industrial" carbonation solution at http://www.instructables.com/id/EKWAN4FF44XY58J/...it's meant for people who carbonate often, and it ends up costing about $0.04 per 2-liter bottle! Tell me what you think!

Very Cool! Would it be bad to seal the tube to the lids of the bottles using hot glue or something? I thought the gas would escape through the holes in the cap or something. Maybe I just don't really understand how carbonation works :)